The relatively new document typesOffice 2007has given some web hosts problems when their clients want to offer documents for download. Most often, the documents are being offered by the web server as“text/html”which is then rendered as a ton of garbage on the web user’s screen.

The best way to resolve this is to add all theMIMEtypes to the server’s main configuration. IIS7 for Windows already has these MIME types set up correctly by default. IIS6 and IIS5 require the MIME types to be added, as mightApacheon older installations. For Apache, there is also a workaround for the individual domain owner to add the mime types via Apache’s.htaccess comhad.

IIS 6 MIME type addition (for the Server Administrator)

Before this can be done, ensure that your server is also set to allow direct metabase editing:

Within the “Internet Information Services” tab (usually the only tab), ensure that the “Enable Direct Metabase Edit” checkbox is checked.

Click [OK]

Be sure toback up IIS’s configuration (anseofor IIS5) beforehand. I won’t take any responsibility for an admin breaking his server. I have reason to believe thismayalso work on IIS5 however I have just as much reason to believe that it might just give lots of errors. If an IIS5 / Windows 2000 admin is willing to test this for meafter backing upyour configuration please let me know of the results.

Copy the following text into a file named msoff07-addmime.vbs and execute itoncefrom the commandline by typingcscriptmsoff07-addmime.vbsand pressing Enter. If you run it more than once, the MIME types will be added each time and you will have multiple identical entries:

Apache MIME type addition (for the Server Administrator)

Apache stores its MIME types in a file normally located at$installpath/conf/mime.types. See the mod_mimedocumentationfor more on how it works. Arch Linuxinstalls its MIME types at/etc/httpd/conf/mime.types agus Parallels Pleskinstalls it in/usr/local/psa/admin/conf/mime.types. Your distribution might have it in another place, so find yourmime.typesfile by runninglocate mime.types.